Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

ESSAY; Is There Censorship?

In accepting a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Foundation at a black-tie gala in Manhattan last month, Judy Blume, the doyenne of young-adult fiction, delivered herself of the following admonition: "Your favorite teacher -- the one who made literature come alive for you, the one who helped you find exactly the book you needed when you were curious, or hurting, the one who was there to listen to you when you felt alone -- could become the next target."

A target, that is, of censorship. Blume's books, which address sexuality and religion with a frankness that has made many a grown-up squeamish, have been among the books most frequently banned from public school libraries over the years, and so the author certainly knows whereof she speaks. Yet there was something slightly alarmist in Blume's remarks. In somber, insistent tones, she spoke as if the authorities were lurking behind the doors of the Marriott Marquis ballroom ready to burst in at any moment and break up the party.

Blume's speech perfectly captured the mood in certain literary circles these days, where air once thick with now banned cigarette smoke instead hangs heavy with talk of the C-word. But the kind of censorship Blume has faced concerns individual libraries choosing not to lend her books, or placing restrictions on who can borrow them. It isn't about government harassment, even though that's what Blume seemed to be implying.

The definition of censorship has loosened so much that the word has become nearly devoid of meaning. Long gone are the days when the government banned racy books like D. H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover," Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" or James Joyce's "Ulysses." When it comes to the written word, censorship debates are no longer about taste and decency -- although those issues are much in the news concerning the visual arts, television and radio. Instead, the debate over books tends to center on geopolitics, national security and foreign policy.

Today, most defenders of the written word are focusing their energies on opposing certain sections of the USA Patriot Act, chief among them Section 215, which states that federal investigators can review library and bookstore records under certain circumstances in terrorism investigations. Larry Siems, the director of international programs at the PEN American Center, strikes an oft-heard chorus when he denounces "the growing use of government surveillance and government intrusion into your creative space." This, in turn, feeds a concern "that the government is able to see more deeply into our intellectual lives," Siems says.

Where there is smoke, there may very well be fire, but there may also be mirrors. It's often hard to draw the line between perception and practice, between how certain government regulations are viewed and how they're actually being enforced. The very mention of the Patriot Act is enough to drive many publishers, writers, librarians, bookstore owners, readers and concerned citizens into a near-paranoid frenzy at the idea that the government is intruding into their personal business, although few can cite specific instances in which that is the case.

Indeed, the marketing department of any given publishing house probably has far more power over free expression in America than any government office; if it decides a smart book won't sell, the publisher may not sign it. Attitudes are rampant, but facts are harder to find. And ultimately, grandstanding and self-righteousness obscure the fact that some cases do approach government censorship.

Consider two recent lawsuits. This fall, a group of publishers and Shirin Ebadi, a lawyer and leading women's rights advocate in Iran who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, filed two separate lawsuits against the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, which places serious restrictions on importing written work by authors in Iran, Sudan, Cuba and other countries under United States trade embargo. Under these regulations, buying the rights to unwritten books or making significant editorial changes to written works without a license is considered "providing a service," and therefore akin to trading with the enemy, something punishable with jail time and fines of up to $1 million. Publishers argue that this regulation violates the First Amendment.

OFAC devotes most of its resources to investigating terrorist financing and narcotics trafficking, and the regulations are largely intended for those aims. Some of the regulations at issue have been on the books for decades -- the Trading With the Enemy Act dates to 1917 -- and since the 80's amendments have been added to exempt "informational materials" from being subject to sanctions. But the current fuss dates back to this spring, when the Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a particularly stiff response to a query from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, which wanted to publish papers by scientists from countries under embargo. The Treasury office ruled that the institute could edit a manuscript from a country under embargo, and engage in peer review, but that making any "substantive or artistic alterations or enhancements of the manuscript" would be illegal without a license. Likewise, no publisher could market a book and no literary agent could sign an author from an embargoed country without a license.

This sent the publishers through the roof. In September, Arcade, an independent publisher; the international writers' organization PEN; the Association of American University Presses; and a division of the Association of American Publishers filed suit against the foreign assets office. "I think that censorship is the biggest danger that could confront this country, aside from physical attack," Richard Seaver, the editor in chief of Arcade Publishing, said in a recent interview in his comfortably cluttered Manhattan office. "Censorship is never dead. It can always rear its ugly head. The danger is greater today than in the past 30 years."

A month later, Ebadi -- the Iranian human rights lawyer (and Iran's first Nobelist), who under the rules can't sell her memoir to an American publisher -- filed her own suit, along with the Strothman Agency of Boston, which can't officially represent her. Ebadi raised the censorship question in an Op-Ed article in The Times last month (which she could publish because newspapers are exempt from some of the regulations). "If even people like me -- those who advocate peace and dialogue -- are denied the right to publish their books in the United States with the assistance of Americans, then people will seriously question the view of the United States as a country that advocates democracy and freedom everywhere," she wrote. "What is the difference between the censorship in Iran and this censorship in the United States? Is it not better to encourage a dialogue between Iranians and the American public?"

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

Salman Rushdie, the president of the board of trustees of the PEN American Center and an old hand at such debates, wrote in a declaration as part of the suit: "Writers in Iran, Cuba and Sudan cannot publish freely in their own countries. It is a tragic and dangerous irony that Americans may not freely publish the works of those writers here, either." Publishers say several books have been suspended or canceled pending the ruling, including "City of Columns: Historic Architecture of Havana" by Alejo Carpentier (Smithsonian Institution Press), "The Encyclopedia of Cuban Music" (Temple University Press) and a paper by geologists at Shiraz University in Iran for an issue of the journal Mathematical Geology. "Even if there isn't a single case where they actually prosecuted, there's a famous chilling effect," says Leon Friedman, a lawyer for PEN and Arcade who helped bring the lawsuit. "Publishers just won't take a chance."

Molly Millerwise, a spokeswoman for the Treasury Department, declined to comment on the lawsuits. She says that over the years, no more than a dozen license applications have been submitted, most of them since last year, and none have been denied, although some are still pending. She says the department encourages publishers to approach them with queries.

So why don't the publishers simply apply for a license? Just ask any self-respecting publisher. "I'm not going to ask permission," Seaver says. "That's the Iranian way of doing things." He says Arcade is going full speed ahead with "Strange Times, My Dear: The PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature," which is due out in April. He acknowledges that the lawsuit might help draw attention to the book. "I think libraries will be more attentive because they will have to be. Booksellers, too."

You can't help getting the sense that there is a certain amount of public relations going on here. Ebadi could conceivably have sold the rights to her memoirs in Britain, and the British publisher could have subsequently sold the American rights. But that wasn't the point. "American readers deserve to be hearing directly from someone like Ebadi," says Wendy Strothman, the literary agent and former publishing executive who is informally representing Ebadi. Strothman says Ebadi might well have been able to get a license "because of her stature as a Nobel laureate," but the lawsuit was "a matter of principle." It's also not entirely clear whether the Treasury Department would allow an American publisher to import such a work from Britain. "There are so many weighing factors," Millerwise says.

Ebadi hasn't yet written her memoir. In her statement to the court, which reads a little like a book proposal, Ebadi says her book would discuss "how I became a lawyer, a judge and a law professor despite the obvious and often official obstacles women in Iran have had to face."

There certainly does seem to be a market for Iranian women's memoirs. Both lawsuits cite the success of Azar Nafisi's best-selling "Reading Lolita in Tehran," about a group of women who met weekly in secret to read forbidden works of Western literature, and of "Persepolis," Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel about growing up during the Iranian revolution. Nafisi emigrated to Washington in 1997, and Satrapi now lives in France; neither could have published her book in Iran. For her part, Nafisi says she finds the Treasury Department regulations "mind-boggling," and has written a letter to the court supporting Ebadi's suit. "I understand sometimes there might be sanctions," Nafisi says. "The point about this law is the people it will hurt are the people who have been suppressed in that country anyway." She continues: "The principle of publishing should be understanding, should be more knowledge. On principle I think you have to publish even Ayatollah Khomeni!"

Although the Treasury rules have been on the books for ages, the lawsuits play into the literary world's general dislike of the Bush administration. When the regulations "reached international ears, it was a very clear example to the international community of a kind of American cultural closed-mindedness," Larry Siems of PEN says. "I spent a lot of time explaining to my international colleagues that this was not this administration's doing."

Both lawsuits may very well be settled in the coming months. In November the Treasury Department asked for a one-month extension so it could file its response to the suits in January. "The reason for the requested extension is that the parties anticipate that there may be developments with a possibly significant effect on the posture of the case, such that the briefing may need to be refocused or may even prove unnecessary," the Treasury Department's attorney wrote to the judge, according to a copy of the letter provided by the Strothman Agency's lawyer. The group of publishers received a similar letter, one of its lawyers said. Both sets of plaintiffs agreed to the extension. It remains to be seen whether the Treasury Department will adjust its regulations or rule only on those specific cases.

Meanwhile, these lawsuits have provided many in the literary and publishing world with a cause -- one that's far more concrete than nebulous fears about the Bush administration or the Patriot Act. And it's certainly more satisfying to focus on censorship than on the future of publishing. It also seems to get the creative juices flowing. "There's always a clash, an underlying tension, between politics, which is basically trying to keep the status quo, and literature, which is constantly questioning the status quo," Nafisi says. "This tension between politics and culture is healthy. Each of us are playing our roles." You might say that all this conflict about infringements -- both real and perceived -- on free expression bodes well for free expression.

ESSAY Editors' Note: December 19, 2004, Sunday An essay on Page 16 of the Book Review today, "Is There Censorship?," discusses government regulations on publishing the work of writers in Iran, Sudan, Cuba and possibly other countries under United States economic sanctions. The essay cites Treasury Department rulings that buying the rights to books not yet written, or making substantive alterations or enhancements in written works from those countries, might be illegal and punishable unless each transaction was licensed in advance by the department. On Wednesday, after the Book Review had gone to press, the Treasury issued a new general license permitting "all transactions necessary and ordinarily incident to the publishing and marketing of manuscripts, books, journals and newspapers" with people in those countries, provided the publishers do not deal with representatives of their governments.